Topic Summaries

Annotations

GCSE > English Literature > AQA > GCSE AQA English Literature Worlds and Lives Poetry Topic Summaries > ‘Thirteen’ by Caleb Femi > Annotations
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Key ideas to compare between poems

You will be four minutes from home

when you are corneredby an officer

who will tell you of a robbery, forty

minutes ago in the area. You fit

the description of a man? – You’ll laugh.

Thirteen, you’ll tell him: you’re thirteen.

 
 

You’ll be patted on the shoulder, then, by another fed

whose face takes you back to Gloucester Primary School,

a Wednesday assembly about being little stars.

This same officer had an horizon in the east

of his smile when he told your class that

you were all supernovas,

the biggest and brightest stars.

 
 

You will show the warmth of your teeth

praying he remembers the heat of your supernova;

he will see you powerless – plump.

You will watch the two men cast lots for your organs.

 
 

Don’t you remember me? you will ask.

You gave a talk at my primary school.

While fear condenses on your lips,

you will remember that Wednesday, after the assembly,

your teacher speaking more about supernovas:

how they are, in fact, dying stars

on the verge of becoming black holes.

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